The Forgotten Investment, Silver

Most of the talk these days centers on gold and gold investing. Its brethren, silver, appears to take secondary role as an investment metal and is thought of more as in jewelry and flatware than as a money making investment.

However, history shows that silver has been a medium for storage of wealth for thousands of years and revered one civilization to the next. It has been widely used in mintage of coins from the Greeks to the Spanish. In fact, silver coins were in wide circulation until 1965 and silver certificates were also redeemable into the precious metal.

Silver has qualities which also make it a sought after industrial metal. It has the highest electrical conductivity of all metals and its ductile and malleable. It has been used in electronics, mirrors batteries, photography and numerous other ways. It has been this trade that has had the most influence on the price since the late 1960’s.

Silvers evolution has extended to the financial markets. As markets have grown futures and ETF’s have had a larger impact. This change in this markets have allowed speculators to participate in silvers price movements. Lately there have been widely circulated news stories concerning the price manipulation of the price of silver. This only goes to show the importance of the metal and that in a free market the price would be much higher than it actually is.

Silver has been on a bull run since 2003 due to the fact that there has been growing demand by both investor and manufacturing alike. At the same time supplies and new finds are declining and restricted. Demand SLV the ETF for Silver has been increasing thereby outpacing supplies of available shares, forcing the custodian to issue new shares and in turn buy more physical silver.

The current economic uncertainty has also played a role in the demand for silver as more investors have purchased it for wealth protection and capital appreciation. This has increased the demand and its price. This trend will most likely continue as the economy faces increasing and renewed challenges.

Scrap silver has become valuable again which speaks as to the current market situation. As silver regains acceptance as an investment vehicle for wealth protection, as it had previously. Demand will continue to grow and compete with industrial sector for the metal. The outcome seems fairly obvious since the metal supply is in limited supply.

It is obvious that silver along with gold should be a precious metal that is included in one’s portfolio that seeks wealth protection and capital appreciation. Both technical and fundamental factors indicate that it is and opportune time to invest in gold and silver.